Burn Your Life Down
by mightjustbe
Summary: This is just something I had to write--involves arson at Dunder-Mifflin, and dangerous situations involving Jim and Dwight in near-death experiences... please r and r!
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note:: _

_This is my first Office fan fiction, so I apologize because I am not nearly as brilliant, witty, or talented as the actual writers (and can I just take a second to tell you how ecstatic I am that the strike is over and new episodes are about a month away!!)_

_The idea of this fiction came because my roommate hasn't seen a single episode of season four yet (I've seen each, repeatedly… I'm a bit addicted.) And thus I am forbidden from discussing any developments so I don't ruin anything. Not talking about the show is hard for me… And today I basically told her that the story below happened at some point in season 4. She knew it didn't, but she said that she liked it, and I thought perhaps I'd let you all judge it!_

* * *

It started out as a relatively "normal" day in the office. Michael had recently developed a crazy for pink ties and matching shoelaces inexplicably, and had begun referring to dollars as "Bunnies", which he insisted was from a movie. Jim and Pam had been unable to confirm this, but were furiously working towards convincing Dwight that Michael had contracted the dreaded Pink Bunny Syndrome—which meant that Michael's brain was rapidly deteriorating; he could only see shades of pink and hallucinated bunnies where none existed. Dwight was concerned, and Pam was happy that the "disease" had distracted him from the Angela situation, which had caused him to mope around for so long that she had ceased to be annoyed by him and only felt overwhelming pity.

It was just another day at Dunder-Mifflin, until the fire alarms sounded, and everything changed. Jim's eyes went wide and shot to his girlfriend, who looked slightly panicked. She gasped and stood, looking at her coworkers, all frozen in place in the relatively unfamiliar situation. In the entire time she'd been there, the only time the alarm had sounded was when Ryan had forgotten his food in the toaster oven, the smoke setting off the alarm.

Dwight took control, just as he had before, instructing everyone to calmly exit the building, Michael already in the stair well. Jim rushed to Pam and held her hand tightly as they followed a pale Phyllis into the hall, Andy rushing after Michael to try and take the opportunity to get closer to the boss. The rest of the office filed out behind, save Dwight, who had not seen Angela leave and was worried she was somehow trapped inside the invisible inferno. He rushed into the back area, through the kitchen to the annex, into the break room calling her name with no response.

He ran into the conference room, "Angela! Monkey?" He looked out of the window to see if he'd just missed her, but her angelic blonde hair was nowhere to be seen. It was then that he heard the door slam shut. He spun around and went to the windows, shocked to see Angela's face through the blinds, the key to the conference room returning to her pocket once she'd pulled it from the handle. "Wait!" He called, but she just turned and walked away.

Angela stumbled from the building and into Andy, who was trying to hug her and hold her even as she pushed him away and chastised him for such behavior. Jim had his arms wrapped around Pam, the pair staring at the windows the floor below their offices, watching the flames dance there. "Oh my God, look! The fire's spread to the break room," she whispered, her shaking finger pointing towards the windows on the third floor.

Jim's mouth fell open as he observed the latest development in the day's drama. First pranking Dwight to help him forget about his pain, and now this. "Wait, where is Dwight?" he whispered. The pair released one another, their eyes scanning the crowd. "He's still up there!" Jim ran for the doors, adrenaline and fear coursing through him.

"Jim!" Pam took a few steps towards him, and he turned; he kissed her before promising her he'd be right back and begging her to stay put.

"I have to know you'll stay here. I have to know you're safe. Promise?"

She nodded and watched him disappear into the stairwell, her eyes filled with tears. Phyllis and Kelly stood beside her and watched as the flames in the break room grew larger, all of them terrified for the safety of their friends.

"Dwight?" The smoke was thick, and he coughed, ripping off his tie and pulling it off his neck. He pulled apart his dress shirt, barely hearing the buttons pop off over the cackle of the flames. He saw they spread into the annex, and he pulled the cotton fabric to his face, covering his nose and mouth. "Dwight, where are you?" His eyes searched the empty office, fear growing within him.

It was then that he saw the closed conference room door. He ran over, trying the handle and confusion taking over when it didn't give. He looked through the blinded windows and saw Dwight, passed out on the floor. He pounded on the window, knowing it was useless and he wouldn't be so easily roused. 'How the hell did this door get locked?' he wondered, trying to work out a plan to save his sort of enemy from the looming peril.

He took long strides to the other side of the office—he could break the window maybe, but then he'd have to pick up Dwight, who outweighed him by at least 30 pounds, and carry him through the window and down the stairs. If he could break down the door, he could save some time, maybe give them both a better chance of escaping relatively safely. He took a deep breath through the white cotton and said a silent prayer before running at full speed at the locked door.

A flash of blinding light. A rush of unyielding pain. He opened his eyes, "Holy…" he tried to focus through the pain, to see where he was. 'Concentrate!' he blinked hard and looked, really looked, at his surroundings. He thought he could hear sirens in the distance. Too far away, though, from the sound. He saw Dwight lying just ten feet away. He'd made it! He pushed himself into a sitting position, taking his weight off of his injured left arm. It was dislocated for sure—possibly broken. But he didn't have time for that, not now; he looked out and saw the flames were growing closer—now just outside the bathrooms. Soon, they would be at his feet, and they would both be doomed. He stood and grabbed Dwight with just his right arm, trying to pull him. Maybe if he could just get them both to the stairwell, or the hall… they could be safe…

He couldn't pull him very far with just the one arm; he took a deep breath and wiggled the fingers of his left arm, wincing as pain shot through him once more. He gritted his teeth and tightened his left hand around Dwight's left wrist, the pain excruciating, but he was able to pull him farther faster, even with such pain. He almost laughed from the joy when he reached the door to the stair well, until he saw that the rush of oxygen from his opening of the door to the hall had fed the flames, and they were spreading now beyond the office. Towards them.

He groaned and opened the door to the stairs, pulling Dwight until they reached the first step. Jim stepped down a few steps, still pulling Dwight, until his back was hovering halfway over the first step. Jim braced himself for the rush of pain he knew was about to come, then put his arms beneath Dwight's, his right wrist holding his left as he tugged the limp body down the stairs. Dwight's feet made a sickening thud with every step, and he cringed from the sound and the pain.

After what felt like an eternity, he reached the door to the ground floor lobby. He grinned, pressing his back into the bar, the door's latch releasing as he continued with renewed vigor. He saw Kevin and Stanley rush forward, throwing open the doors with muttered curses, each pulling Dwight from his grasp as Jim collapsed with a curious mixture of relief and pain.

"JIM!" He turned his head to see his girlfriend rushing towards him, and he smiled at her before his head fell against the stiff carpet, finally finding some relief to the pain.

* * *

The backs of his eyelids were on fire, a blaze of white. He just wanted to sleep! He sighed and tried to turn over, stopping only when he felt a hand tightly grasping his own and the soft whisper of his name.

His eyes flew open and he looked at her—her eyes were rimmed in crimson and filled with tears, but she smiled. "Glad you're up…" she whispered, her voice rough from a mixture of emotion and lack of sleep.

"What happened?"

"You dislocated your left shoulder… you have a compound fracture of the radius and ulna, and a greenstick fracture of your humerus, with slight smoke inhalation…"

He raised an eyebrow, "I have what-now?"

She grinned and shook her head, "Sorry, I have it memorized now, after having to call your parents and your roommate…"

His eyes went wide, "You called my parents?"

"You are in the hospital, Jim. You've been out cold for more than two days! Of course I called your parents!" She took a deep breath, "Sorry. I just made everyone leave to get food—I should really call them and tell them you're up."

He held her hand tightly and held her there, "What's wrong?"

"Besides the fact that you're in the hospital?" He gave her a stern look and she shrugged, "Honestly, I'm a little pissed at you."

"You're what!"

She tugged her hand from his hold, "You went into a burning building! You rushed in like you were invincible, Jim, and left me outside to worry about you. You were up there for more than ten minutes, and we all stood and watched the flames spread. I thought you were dead!" Her hands covered her eyes and she bit her lip, trying not to cry. "And then you came out of the stairwell and I thought 'Thank God, he's fine!' But you weren't fine—you could've died. Didn't you think about that?"

"I'm sorry, Pam. I didn't think that I would get hurt, honestly. All I thought about was that Dwight was somewhere up there, and I had to try to save him. I couldn't let him just…" He stopped and looked at her, "Oh my God, Dwight! How is he? Is he…?"

She shook her head, "He still hasn't come around yet. Mose has been with him pretty constantly, keeps telling him stories about their childhood with the beets, hoping he'll come around. I've tried to talk Angela into visiting—I think it would help him, you know?" She shrugged, "The doctors say he has more extensive issues due to the smoke inhalation the he endured, but they're hopeful and they say he's made good strides. It's just so weird to see him there, like that. He's not Dwight like this…"

Jim nodded, "If I wouldn't have gone in there, he would be dead…"

"You don't know that for sure! All you did was risk your own life and his!"

He stared at her, "I know he would've died because he was locked in the conference room. He didn't just pass out—he was trapped, Pam."

"How did he…"

"Someone purposely did this to him. Someone locked him in that room and was going to let him die."

Pam sank back into her chair beside him, staring off into space, "Who would want to do that?"

"I don't know, but we need to tell the police…"

To be continued!!


	2. Chapter 2

A/N This chapter is shorter than the first. I'll try to get two more up by monday--but I'm not sure how long this is going to be. At the moment, I'm just trying to get the story out... Hope you like it, and please review again! and italics are flashbacks.

* * *

They returned to the newly-finished office the same day that Jim was released. Michael insisted he take time off, at least a week, to fully recuperate—even got corporate to pay him for the time he'd miss. But Jim sat for an hour on his couch, flipping through the channels and not absorbing a single word, not paying any attention to the shows. His mind was at Dunder-Mifflin, with his coworkers, on their first day back since the fire. He wanted to be there, with them. He sighed and pushed himself off the couch—it took him a full twenty minutes to get dressed now. He had to undo his arm-harness and carefully remove his shirt, his left shoulder still tender and heavily bruised, not to mention the not-yet healed humerus. Then he had to maneuver his way out of one sleeve without jostling his shoulder too much, forcing his thick cast through the tiny opening. Next up was trying to get the cast into one of his work shirts. After trying for a solid five minutes and only succeeding in making himself feel wildly out of control pain, he decided that his coworkers wouldn't mind if he showed up in a short-sleeved dress shirt. He smiled as he pulled his only one from his closet—an awful shade of yellow, it perfectly matched one of Dwight's favorite shirts. At least Jim assumed it was his favorite—he wore it as often as humanly possible.

He opened the door and smiled at her slackened jaw, "What are you doing here?" She admonished, standing and rushing to him, "You have this week off, Jim! You should be at home, resting!"

"What can I say, I just couldn't stay away," He whispered as he wrapped his right arm around her. "I couldn't think at my place. I had to get out of there… and this was, tragically, the only place I could think of coming."

She grinned, "That is a tragedy…" She walked with him to his desk with her wild grin in place. _After two days of solid apologizing and her constant emotional swings from angry to terrified to sad and back to the beginning, he'd finally managed to break her down. She admitted that she was so grumpy because she kept having nightmares that the fire had taken him away, and she woke up unable to tell dream from reality. 'It's awful… and I just. I don't want to lose you, that's all' she'd whispered. 'And you won't. I promise, Pam' he whispered back, holding her hand in his before tugging her into the small bed beside him, his right arm beneath her shaking shoulders as she buried her face into his collarbone. He placed a kiss on her forehead and held her tightly until she calmed down._

"What are you doing here?" And before he had even looked away from her, they all swarmed over to him, surrounding them and bombarding him with questions.

"HEY!" Pam shouted, and everyone paused to stare at her. "Let's all just give Jim a little space, alright? If you have a question, ask. But only one at a time, and he'll only answer if he wants to, understand?"

They all nodded, dumbfounded by her sudden assertiveness. "My body guard, huh?" He whispered playfully. "I'm here because I couldn't sit at my place doing nothing. It was boring. And there is rarely a boring day here, so…" He shrugged his right shoulder, his newest adaptation created to avoid causing himself pain.

"So you're only here because you were bored?" Stanley grumbled.

Jim's eyes went wide. "Why else?" How did Stanley know he'd had ulterior motives? He had been sitting there, trying to enjoy his time off, trying to pretend it was some kind of paid vacation. But that's not what it was at all, and all of his pretending didn't take away from the fact that there had been a fire, that his coworker had been trapped inside, that he could've died but was instead just slightly wounded. What if it happened again? What if, God forbid, it was Pam this time? Would someone go inside for her? He couldn't sit there and pretend he was on a vacation when there was the possibility that the fire had been set on purpose. The police wouldn't say it conclusively, but after Jim had told them everything, they said it was most likely no accident that the fire had happened. Too coincidental.

Stanley just shrugged and shuffled back to his desk, and Jim let out a sigh of relief. Pam would be angry with him if she knew he'd only truly returned because he was afraid of another fire taking her from him. The crowd dispersed just as quickly as it had formed, and once he was alone, his eyes naturally fell upon Dwight's empty desk. He frowned and tapped his pencil on his desk, lost in thought.

"You should go see him." He looked over to Pam, "I mean, I know he's not awake, but… maybe it will help?"

He nodded and stood, kissing her on the cheek, "I think I will. I'll be back—want me to bring you some lunch? I can get take-out from that Italian place you like…" She nodded and he grinned as he walked out to the car he technically wasn't supposed to be driving for another two weeks or so. But who listened to doctors? He couldn't—not when they had told him Dwight was unlikely to recover unless he came around within the next 48 hours.


End file.
